PERFECTLY IMPERFECT

It’s not enough to just hashtag pray. It’s not enough to just send out a tweet or like a post on Facebook. It will never be the “right” time to discuss gun control. Gun control has to be politicized, or we won’t talk about it.

Most Americans support policies that reduce access to guns including more rigorously background checks on private and gun show sales and banning the sale of semi-automatic and assault-style weapons. Once these policies are proposed in Congress, groups like the NRA create a narrative where “everyone wants to take all your guns!” This is not the case.

Virginia Tech didn’t create meaningful policy change. Sandy Hook didn’t create meaningful policy change. Pulse Nightclub didn’t create meaningful policy change. When is it going to be enough? How many people have to die before legislation that PROTECTS Americans is implemented?

Gun control can help prevent more mass shootings. But gun control is also about protecting children, victims of domestic violence, suicidal individuals, and our law enforcement. Greater access to guns dramatically increases the risk of suicide. In states with more guns, more police officers are killed on duty. Guns kill nearly 1,300 children every year in the U.S. 760 people a year are killed by a current or former partner. And these numbers don’t even provide the full picture since not all agencies provide data.

An Australian study found that buying back 3,500 guns per 100,000 people correlated with up to a 50 percent drop in firearm homicides, and a 74 percent drop in gun suicides. While buying back guns isn’t going to happen anytime soon in the United States, we can demand Congress pass legislation that saves lives and makes America a safer place for our friends and family.

Don’t let the NRA and the congress people they buy make the narrative about taking all the guns away, or that shooters, not guns, are the problem.

As former President Barack Obama said after the Umpqua Community College mass shooting in Oregon a few years ago, “We are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses or want to do harm to other people. We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months…This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.”

Congress just introduced an extremely dangerous bill they're calling "concealed carry reciprocity" that would force all 50 states to allow stalkers, domestic abusers, and people with no safety training to carry hidden, loaded guns in public. If you don’t want this bill passed, click on the link below and fill out the short form.